


Little Deer, White Wolf

by boychik



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beauty - Freeform, Drabble, EXO Shipping Challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 22:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1202491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boychik/pseuds/boychik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little deer, Wu Yifan and Huang Zitao had called him. You’re just like a little deer, Lu.</p><p>I’m not, Luhan would protest. I’m hardly little, I’m older than you—</p><p>But not taller, Wu Yifan would say, and Zitao would laugh his high strange laugh, the sounds ripping out of his throat like a flock of birds madly chattering to one another across a canopy of trees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Deer, White Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> magical wolf-boy AU

Little deer, Wu Yifan and Huang Zitao had called him. You’re just like a little deer, Lu.

I’m not, Luhan would protest. I’m hardly little, I’m older than you—

But not taller, Wu Yifan would say, and Zitao would laugh his high strange laugh, the sounds ripping out of his throat like a flock of birds madly chattering to one another across a canopy of trees. 

They’re living in the forest, just the three of them, in a sort of queer young family. It’s Luhan’s turn to hunt today. 

Shouldn’t we hunt in a pack? he had asked when they had first started living together. Isn’t that how the wolves do it?

Wu Yifan considered his question seriously. We’re not quite men, but we’re not quite wolves, he said. Let’s try it this way for a while. Zitao—Zitao needs to rest. And Wu Yifan looked a little paler as he gestured to Zitao, who was in the corner of the den nursing his gash, red and raw and ripped half a foot across his belly.

Even with the wushu? Luhan asked.

He was caught off guard. Wu Yifan lowered his voice. The stags may be more powerful than we thought. Be careful out there, little deer. And he had clapped Luhan on the back and sent him out to hunt.

Long and faunlike though they may be, Luhan’s legs are by no stretch of the imagination buckling under him as he runs across the clearing. He looks back at Wu Yifan and Zitao as though to demonstrate his competence. They’re laying together inside the den, eyes hooded in shadows, noses poking out onto the sun-speckled stone. Luhan can see them smile. He runs quickly and quietly into the thick of the forest.

\---

It’s already been an hour and it’s as if every mammal in the whole forest save him and Zitao and Wu Yifan is long dead, recently migrated, or far underground where he can’t sense them. It’s not in Luhan’s nature to get angry but his stomach’s clawing at him for some fresh meat and it’s making him more than a little frustrated.

Little deer, little deer... The words ring in his front of his mind, and the back answers: that’s not me, that’s not me... 

He knows Wu Yifan and Zitao mean no harm by the nickname, but the words annoy him more the more tired he becomes. Little deer, so soft and gentle... It’s mocking and the worst of it is, he knows he can hunt better than this. But he can’t very well use his powers if there’s no animals around to command. So what are these words that he never asked for doing in his head, at the least opportune of times...

Luhan wanders down to the river to drink water. Maybe if he’s lucky there’ll be a fish or two, leaping out of an eddy or shimmying through the current straight into his waiting paws. Yes, if he’s very lucky his fingers will be slick with blood within the hour, fish’s guts drying dark under the hooks of his nails.

His gut says it’ll take more than that, but who is Luhan if not an optimist? 

(Not a little deer, that’s for certain.)

\---

All this waiting in the sun in the middle of the day has Luhan feeling sleepier and sleepier. The midday sun is high and warm against his face. A cool, gentle breeze blows in from the northeast, ruffling the long grasses and tickling his body. His tail twitches lazily as he watches the short shadows of his claws dance on the surface of the clear water. There’s nary a fish in sight and his eyes slowly ease closed, until his head drops on the sun-drenched rock and he’s dead to the world.

Fifteen minutes, a sudden noise wakes him and he springs up, alert. His mouth’s already watering in anticipation as he whips around, teeth sharp, claws out, ready to pounce on whatever prey he can get.

But it’s not prey. Luhan stops mid-motion and stares at the sight he’d never believed he would see outside of the bodies of Wu Yifan and Zitao: A white wolf leaps up, suspended in a whirl of pale wind that dissolves as quickly as it arises. In the wake of the transformation, a young man descends. In his human form, he’s taller and narrower than Luhan. He moves with an easy grace, active but controlled. This is Luhan’s first sight of Sehun, and he can’t look away.

(Luhan doesn’t know his name at the time, but he will come to know it better than he realizes.)

Everything about Sehun is sharp. His nose cuts a proud line against the midday sun, and his jaw juts out as the finer side of a mountain. His eyebrows slant upward in confident lines like two swords bowing to one another after a duel. Strange though, was that his face hardly seems to move—any trace of emotion is visible only for a single flitting of a hummingbird’s heart—but somehow he has an air of being perpetually unsatisfied, like he’s always on the prowl, looking for something other, something _more._ Even when he smiles, his eyes retain an edge of hardness. They glimmer hard-edged in the sun, like instead of eyes someone had inlaid polished pieces of agate into his skull, painted in pupils and let him live that way: reflecting light, breaking hearts.

The only part of him that looks soft are his lips, but even so, they’re set in a firm, fierce line. None shall pass, says his mouth, silently. Like no other mouth has done before.

It’s not correct to say he’s perfect, somehow—but he’s so extraordinarily beautiful he looks constructed, almost. No one can be born that beautiful, but somehow Sehun was—

It’s dizzying. Though Luhan’s looking at a face as calm as the sea, he feels like he was hit right in the chest by the same stag that ripped open Zitao. 

(Sehun. Sehun. Oh Sehun. No one would dare call him a little deer.)

He smiles and Luhan’s heart stops for a minute. When he leaves, it starts back up again, an imitation of how he lived before.

\---

When Luhan returns to the den, Wu Yifan licking at Zitao’s wound because apparently saliva speeds up the healing process, he has nothing. This is the first time he has nothing to show for his efforts.

Little deer, welcome back! says Zitao. And upon seeing Luhan’s empty paws—Where’s the game?

Is everything okay, Wu Yifan asks. He’s blank-faced as usual but Luhan knows him well enough to know he’s concerned.

There’s another wolf in the forest, Luhan announces, and somehow that’s the only thing he could say, the only thing he needs to say. He stares off into the light of the fire burning outside but he swears, no light can compare to what he’s just seen.

And then...? says Zitao, genuinely curious.

It’s okay, Wu Yifan says, nudges Zitao, gives him another lick. Zitao winces. He’ll tell us when he’s ready.

When Luhan thinks about him, his heart constricts as though Sehun were using some sort of powers of his own to capture each of his atria and ventricles, tie up his arteries with his own veins and squeeze the whole mess into a tiny metal box.

What if I never what if I never what if I never see him again, is the frenzied worry racing in circles through his head. His mangled heart continues to beat, pulsing painfully against the sides of the tiny box. Imaginary as it is, the metal box smells stronger even than Zitao’s wound. One-two. One-two. Maybe he’s cut. Maybe he’s bleeding. One-two. One-two. One-two. One-two. 

(Luhan doesn’t know it, but someday they’ll run through the forest side by side with no higher goal than being together. Sehun will once or twice call him by another name, screaming into the wind: Little dear, little dear! and Luhan for the first time won’t think that’s not me, that’s not me.)


End file.
